Broken English (2007)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: C+
It could
be argued who the reigning king of independent filmmaking is, but even after
her turn in Superman Returns, Parker
Posey is the queen. Surviving in a field
that is increasingly being debased by bad product, egos, stupidity,
pretentiousness, blockbuster screen-hogging and a generation or two of would-be
filmmakers with far less talent than they think they have, Posey has a knack
for picking great roles and giving great performances. Zoe Cassavetes’ Broken English (2007) is the latest such choice.
Posey
plays Nora Wilder, sick of not finding love or a good man in New York. For better or for worse, she is stuck in a
domestic routine that is just not working out for her. She has friends, a decent life, yet there is
something missing and it is beyond having that ideal man. It is a lack of satisfaction with life. Then she meets a Frenchman (Melvil Poupaud)
and new possibilities open up.
She also
feels like and seems to be the only one who is single in all this, which at a
time when the media strangely is treating being single like a disease (which we
wonder is an off-shoot of homophobia, anti-counterculture, anti-individualist
sentiments partly attributable to the extreme Right, especially where women are
concerned) that she would even have to feel like this, but Cassavetes subtly
handles that aspect well. This is a
quiet film and a good one, but it never exceeds its confines and that is just
fine.
In the
shadow of her genius father John, it is admirable and even effective at time in
tone, but still offers a female point-of-view narrative (she wrote the
screenplay too) that we do not see enough.
Like her friend Sofia Coppola, she too could carve a personal cinema of
female space and if this is the start, if she can work at it, Zoe Cassavetes
could become another all too rare-but-important female cinematic voice and
maybe even start a movement that would be a permanent space for more female
filmmakers to follow.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is shot in HD and is actually not bad
looking, but this DVD has more than a few flaws like detail and depth issues
and color is consistent enough. Director
of Photography John Pirozzi delivers some of his best work yet. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix stretches out the
original sound out a bit thin, but is a tad better than the Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo, but this is still pretty much a dialogue-based work just the same. Extras include deleted scenes, Higher Definition installment on the
show from HDNet and a separate making of featurette.
If you
have patience and interest, you should definitely give Broken English a good look.
Drea de Matteo, Peter Bogdanovich, Roy Thinnes, Justin Theroux and the
great Gena Rowlands also star.
- Nicholas Sheffo
